Huge viking vessel to be shown at museum

An enormous long boat uncovered in 1996 at Roskilde is the largest Viking vessel ever discovered.

Dating back over 1,000 years and measuring 118ft long, the ancient Viking troop carrier would have been capable of transporting 100 warriors and is thought to have taken more than 30,000 hours to build. A stunning example of Viking shipbuilding, the vessel would have been a part of a fleet of up to 100 vessels that could deliver 10,000 battle-hardened warriors to anywhere they were needed.

"This ship was a troop carrier," said Gareth Williams of the British Museum. "There are records in the annals of fleets of hundreds of ships. So you could be talking about an army of up to 10,000 men suddenly landing on your coast, highly trained, fit, capable of moving very fast on water or land."

It is believed that this particular vessel was deliberately sunk along with several other ships in a defensive effort to narrow the fjord approaching the former capital of Denmark.

"The largest Viking ship ever found, a 118 foot troop carrier, is to go on display at the British museum 1,000 years after it helped King Canute control the seas of northern Europe."

Who knows they may of figured a way to build them bigger one must never say never. They did build bigger ships later on. They just weren't the typical norse longships or knarrs. Those must be built from a single tree trunk (for their backbone, so to speak). Other types of ships they did build, later on, once the viking age had ended.

This is north America, we should be celebrating Viking Day not Columbus Day. The Vikings didn't have the support of Queen Isabella. Monarchs have written our history for us. Skipping over everything he's well known for, Columbus was an obviously egotistical madman simply from the way he went about getting support for his voyages. It would be interesting to see this ship in person some day.

I like Vikings. They had pointy horn hats. Nice article. Every time I see a movie with warriors who have horns or other such nonsense on their helmets I just shake my head... No sensible fighter would ever do that for several reasons... 1. Too much weight on the head for no extra purpose... 2. A sword, spear or other weapon that strikes the 'horn' could very easily snap the neck of the fool who was wearing it - at the very least throwing them off balance... Also after reading a lot of the comments on the original article, it seems many people don't realise that 'Viking' was not a person but wa... [More]